soil scientist, professor, author, b. Walworth County. He was educated at Whitewater state normal school and Cornell Univ. After teaching high school science for three years at Berlin, Wis., he became professor of natural science at River Falls state normal school (1878-1888). In 1888 he was appointed professor of agricultural physics at the Univ. of Wisconsin. During his tenure there (1888-1901), he conducted research on such subjects as barn ventilation, silo construction, soil physics and chemistry, and wrote books on soil, ventilation, and agricultural physics. In 1901 he joined the U.S. Bureau of Soils as chief of the Division of Soil Management and under-took systematic studies of soil fertility. Resigning from this position in 1904, he returned to Madison where he devoted his time to writing. A tour of China, Korea, and Japan led to his most important book, Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911), which described peasant methods of maintaining soil fertility. Dict. Amer. Biog.; W. H. Glover, Farm and College (Madison, 1952); M. Curti and V. Carstensen, Univ. of Wis. (2 vols., Madison, 1949); F. H. King Papers.Learn More
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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]
